I am looking forward to Leanna’s workshop, too. Should be terrific.

At conferences, I only attend those I’m totally interested in these days. In the beginning, long, long ago, I stayed in workshops from morning till the last one was over. After several days, they all blended together and I walked away with information shock in those newbie days. I’m sure I walked around with the deer-in-the-headlight look too, clutching my gift bag to my chest.

Anyway, it’ll probably be a long time before I sign up for any more classes because I don’t get much out of them these days.

I took many online workshops when I first started writing. Now I only take the ones that I feel fit a topic I have to learn more about and get update in my knowledge.

So sometimes the workshops are related to industry, craft, technology, or research. I’m very careful about my time and thus I need to see that the workshop/class works for me.

Oh, and if a writer I admire is teaching a class, I’ll take that if the timing works for me. For example, in January I took online classes with Allison Brennan and a Using Word for Writers.

I learned very much from both.

The last online workshop I took was Margie Lawson’s on body language. It also had voice cues, which was a nice bonus. I love all her classes, and using body language in writing has been something I’ve been interested in for a long time.

The best things about local conferences for me is talking to and getting to know the other writers in the area. That’s the main reason I go to ours year after year instead of going to another conference that might have more agents and editors.

Conference workshops, however, can be invaluable. I’ve been to enough conferences where I can really pick and choose which ones would be most beneficial to me. But I know what you mean when you say that you’ve heard a lot of this stuff before. It does become repetitious … hence the reason you have to chose carefully so as to not waste your time.